


Odd One Out

by aishitara



Category: Leverage
Genre: Brotherly Affection, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Unrequited Crush, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 02:19:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1727519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aishitara/pseuds/aishitara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot wakes up from a nightmare and ponders his feelings for a certain blonde thief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odd One Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Leverage fic, written a few years ago and sitting on my laptop collecting digital dust. I'm airing it out now for folks to read. It's self-beta'ed, so any mistakes are 100% my own. Would love some feedback, as I'm wondering if I should continue to dabble in the Leverage sandbox or not. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Leverage or any of its characters. Just writing for my own amusement...!
> 
> Spoilers: None.

_Snap_.

Eliot wakes with an expelled breath and a pounding heart. He looks wildly around the room, disoriented; he runs shaking hands through his hair, sucks air into his lungs like a man drowning and tries desperately to erase the image that flashes on the back of his eyelids like it’s burned there. It’s too much. Eliot kicks the tangle of sheets from his legs and throws himself out of bed. No sense in trying to sleep any more tonight.

No sense in trying to sleep, ever.

This nightmare plagues him. All of the things he’s seen and done in his life, and _this_ is what haunts his preciously earned sleep. Eliot strides down the hall with purpose, just to look, just to _check_ , because maybe it’s not a nightmare. Maybe it’s a warning. He’s never been one for superstition, but…

He comes into the darkened living room and sees the shape of Parker outlined on the couch. Orange light from the streetlamps pours into the room and in the dimness he can see the rise and fall of her breath. She’s fine. She’s _fine_. Alive and breathing and blissfully _asleep_ and fine.

Eliot lets out a long, slow breath. He falls back against the wall and tells himself he is not relieved, because there is nothing to be relieved about. It was just a stupid dream. His mind playing tricks on him while he tries to catch up desperately on sleep. That’s all. That’s all.

Parker stirs. She mumbles something in her sleep and turns over on the couch, and the blanket she’s got on falls to the floor. Eliot watches her a moment more before crossing the room and picking the blanket up. He holds it in his hands, watching her face in the orange-lit room, and contemplates why his mind conjures this nightmare of her dying. 

Careful, gentle, he drapes the blanket over Parker’s slight body and goes back to his room. Knowing he won’t sleep again, not _wanting_ to sleep again, he strips his shirt off and ties his hair back and lies flat on his stomach and starts doing press-ups. He thinks that if he can make his body hurt with exhaustion, maybe then he can better ignore the ache in his chest.

He’s losing her. Just like he’s lost everyone who’s ever been important to him. And somehow, the careful walls he’s built up to keep everyone out don’t keep her out. Never have done, if he’s being honest with himself, and Eliot has always been brutally honest with himself.

It’s no use pretending she would ever see him as anything more than a big brother, anyway.

Just something to accept, like every other thing that’s ever happened to him, or not happened. Nate has Sophie and Hardison has Parker and Eliot is the odd one out. Because Eliot Spencer doesn’t do attachments, he doesn’t do friends, he barely even does colleagues. He’s alone, and he’ll always be alone, and all he can do is keep moving forward. All he can do is protect the people that he desperately wants to love but can only keep at arms’ length. That is what he tells himself, alone is his room in the middle of the night.

Eliot rolls onto his back and stares up at the shadowed ceiling. His mind trips over the word “love,” trips like it was running towards something, a lifeline, anything, and he closes his eyes, reaching for some semblance of peace in his mind. He slows his breath. He slows his thoughts until they dwindle to nothing. He slows his heart. And he accepts the pang in his chest, like a gunshot, like a knife, he just takes it like he’s taken every other blow and dusts himself off, he walks away.  

He walks as far away as he’s able to walk, anyway. And for now, that’s all he can do.

End.


End file.
